


From Outside Creation

by Zekkass



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-21
Updated: 2010-11-21
Packaged: 2017-10-13 07:38:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/134721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zekkass/pseuds/Zekkass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gabriel is captured by creatures from outside Creation and transformed into something terrible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From Outside Creation

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably the scariest thing I have ever written. If you have feedback, though, let me know.
> 
> Really effin creepy. Body horror. Go look at [H.R. Giger's](http://www.hrgiger.com/) art and yes. It's that kind of creepy, and really inspiring.

It was looking at him. Oh, hell, it was _looking_ at him. He hadn't even known that these things could have eyes. Gabriel held his breath and his Grace and every ounce of power he had, and he held it in, praying that it was blind, or that it wouldn't move towards him, or _something_.

No, no, here it came, and Gabriel forced his Grace out and along his sword, thrusting it in a smooth movement at the creature's chest. It's guaranteed to turn angels to dust, give archangels bloody wounds, and there's nothing stronger than archangels that he's found so far, and this creature should be nothing more than a nasty stain on the floor now.

But his Grace dissipates the instant it touches the creature, the blade glances off, and Gabriel is being dragged sword-first into a mockery of a hug. There's something squirming coming at his face, there's wet in his mouth and nose, pain in his chest and sides and everywhere, and he's out.

(The creature steps back, impossibly long and impossibly curled and twisted upon itself, ridges and wrong edges on its hide. It has holes for eyes at the end of a far-too-long arm, if that is an arm, and it is gathering Gabriel into its other arm, if that too is an arm, and this too-long creature is uncurling, opening one end of itself. It's not long before Gabriel is pushed feet first into the creature, and it's not long before he slips entirely inside, and the creature closes the end and curls itself again. There is the sound of human bones snapping as it curls in a way human skeletons can't bend, but it doesn't react. The creature is thicker now, but no larger than it was before. It walks away, Gabriel broken within it.)

\---

The next time Gabriel comes back to himself he is in excruciating pain and it is some time before he can focus enough to remember why, let alone wonder where he is.

He feels very warm, numb of everything except pain and warmth, and he can hear this terrible hissing noise.

He struggles to open his eyes, struggles to see, as he can't feel his Grace, and when he gets his eyes open he sees this: a long stretching corridor shaped like the inside of a whale's skeleton, if it were too large and black. He sees that there is no floor, simply a pit that goes down and down and down, and he realizes that he is hanging from one of the ribs, somehow held to it.

There is a purple haze, there are damp smells, there is this hissing, as if a million cats were upset, and he can't move anything besides his eyes.

He realizes a moment later that he isn't breathing, and yet he's still thinking and feeling pain.

Prayer follows soon after that, desperate cries to a God and Father he hasn't spoken to in centuries.

\---

Gabriel has been hanging here forever. There has been only one change in his condition: a purple-gray shape approached from his left and covered his face, and now he is encased in a mask that he cannot breathe nor see nor hear out of.

He doesn't know how he's still alive. He doesn't know why he's still alive.

God isn't answering his prayers, he's powerless, and now. He startles when he realizes that there is something new. There is something cold in him, something jagged, and he can feel it in his stomach.

Suddenly more of these cold dry things are stabbing into him, and he is trying to scream but that mask he is never allowed out of is muffling him. Yet he works his mouth open somehow to scream, and then the mask is reaching/growing into his mouth, filling every empty space within him with itself.

His throat is filled, his lungs are filled, and he is being torn apart from the inside out, and he still does not die.

\---

Gabriel's body is no longer his own. He can see again, but it's filtered through white and purple and gray and everything is terribly distorted. He's been dropped from the rib-wall and he fell forever, and at the bottom he was standing on broken limbs that he sees are twisted and fused over black hide and metal. His legs are impossibly long and bend in all the wrong ways, but he can walk without pain now. His arms are the same, and he has to hold them folded close to his chest so they don't drag on the floor.

He's too big, stretched thin, and there is the cold of metal and the warmth of alien skin in him and around him.

The floor of the pit is littered with broken bones and twisted metals, and he doesn't even know why he's here.

Simply that he must get out, must find a way to safety. Gabriel's not exactly calm and rational these days, even with new things to see and new things to think. But he can pull himself together enough to climb over the piles and towards a wall, wanting to look for an exit.

\---

The pit goes forever, as does its walls, and Gabriel realizes that he's hungry. He hasn't taken a breath of air in forever as his nose and lungs are filled, and yet he is hungry. He hasn't even tried to touch his face yet to see what has happened there, so he doesn't even know if he can eat.

He ignores the feeling and keeps going, walking with a speed that he could not have reached with a simple human body. His legs take ridiculously long strides, after all.

There is movement to his right and unthinkingly he unfolds his arms and catches that movement. Unthinkingly, instinctually he realizes that this is warm and bleeding and therefore food, and whatever-it-is is in his suddenly-open mouth. He doesn't even taste it, and hears the sound of gears turning when his mouth closes.

When Gabriel breaks out of his daze and realizes what he just did, he collapses against the wall and tries to open his mouth, and he discovers that it's sealed over with metal and his eyes are covered with goggles as best as he can tell, and he has no nose. Not anymore.

This is the point where he almost gives up and lets himself become one of the skeletons down here, because he is no longer an angel, let alone a human, and he isn't worth saving from this hell.

\---

Gabriel drags himself back upright and drags himself along the wall, and forever later he discovers an opening. He looks out, and he can see a small corridor that curves at an angle. This is where he discovers that he can't close his eyes.

He can't stop looking. He can't stop looking at this nightmare, and so he walks forward into the corridor, follows its twists and turns to a round room that is the cleanest, whitest room he has ever seen. He nearly collapses with relief to see something so clean and pure, something so like Heaven, and he leans in the corridor for a few minutes before he can make himself go into it.

Inside it is still clean, and the floor is comfortable, a marked difference from the unevenness from before.

There is the sound of something behind him and he spins, but it is only the corridor disappearing as the white covers it. Slides shut over it? He can't tell.

The floor is soft, and there is another sound behind him so he turns. He is unconsciously lowering himself to the floor in a crouch, ready to spring away or forward, and he almost does before he realizes who it is. What it is.

There is a human before him, and he can see Grace spilling out behind the human's eyes. Even broken and twisted like this he can see Grace, and he is thankful for that.

Gabriel relaxes, hoping, unable to tell. It is someone with Grace, an angel or God or someone holy and he can't tell, not with his vision distorted and his mind half-way blurred.

"Gabriel," the person says, and he falls to his knees for an entirely different reason.

Gabriel cannot speak, but he knows the voice of his Father, and he wants to answer him.

"I am sorry, my son." God is speaking and Gabriel is listening as best he can. "These creatures are not...I cannot change their destinies in any way, Gabriel."

Gabriel doesn't understand.

"I can do nothing to help you now, Gabriel, except take you to safety. I cannot harm or hinder a creature that was not of my creating, and these came from outside."

Gabriel still cannot understand.

"I am sending you to safety, Gabriel. You would have fallen to your death otherwise. Rest here."

Gabriel reaches out a hand, and God touches it. He is hurt and broken in too many ways, and he can understand that God cannot fix him.

He wants to tear God apart, but the soft beneath his feet and the sudden sleep God is granting him is pulling at him.

God watches Gabriel curl into a tight ball and sleep, and there is pity in the deity's eyes as he watches his broken son dream.

\---

If there's anything Sam wasn't expecting to find in their hotel room when they got back from the police station, aliens and God were pretty near the top of the list.

So to find both in the room when he flicks on the lights - well. He almost turns off the lights again.

Dean prods his shoulder. "What, is the maid dancing in there?" (And Sam saw Dean give that young pretty maid those looks. Sam knows that Dean wants to see that.)

So Sam takes a step in and to the side, and God and the alien are still in their hotel room.

God looks up. Ever since he resurrected Gabriel and Castiel, and after Heaven was in order and Sam and Dean and met up again, he's been dropping in to visit and advise them. So it's no surprise that he's here, but still. God, in Sam's hotel room. With an alien. Can Sam's life _get_ any weirder?

"Hello, Sam and Dean," God says, and Sam secretly can't wait until God's done using Chuck as a vessel, as Chuck was a lot easier to deal with. "I need your help."

"Since when does God need our help?" Dean asks, and yes, Sam knows that Dean is going to have anger issues towards God forever. But when your life is screwed over from birth by the guy's kids and you let it happen - well. Sam understands.

"I need you help because I cannot heal Gabriel for several specific reasons, none of which you will accept. However, you can ease his pain, and I have work to do to guarantee that no more of my children suffer his fate."

Sam looks at the alien again, and man that's one ugly mesh of black skin, warped pale human skin and metal. If anything it looks like a Borg had a kid with the xenomorphs from Alien, and yeah. Ew.

"That's Gabriel?" Sam asks, not really believing it.

"Yes. He is sleeping now, but he will wake up soon. The outsiders - the best term for you to understand is aliens - made irreversible changes to his body and mind. He is not entirely intact, but he will not harm you."

Sam watched Gabriel's prone form and realized he wasn't breathing. There was no rise of lungs, no subtle twitches to indicate that he was alive. He heard Dean prepare to launch into questions, but God spoke first.

"I am sending Castiel to help you. Take care of him." And God was gone.

And Gabriel was suddenly twitching, beginning to stir, and Sam realized that he could see his eyes opening behind a pair of metal goggles.

\---

Gabriel knows that God is no longer here, even without opening his eyes. That calming presence that is home is gone, and instead there are two warm bodies that will bleed if he eats them. Gabriel can't say how he knows this, but all of his instincts - some distance part of his brain screams that they aren't his real instincts, but falsified alien ones - want him to lunge up and eat, before the food escapes.

Only the soft bed beneath him and the absence of pain lets Gabriel stay in control. He feels fear, realizing that his control is so thin. He feels a host of emotions, now that he can think clearly - even if it isn't as sharp a clarity as he remembers - again.

He opens his eyes, knowing that God probably placed him with the Winchesters, as God never tires of making their lives difficult. It takes time to adjust, but there, he can tell: Sam is watching him, staring back as he wakes up, and there's Dean, and Gabriel decides to get up.

Gabriel would laugh if he could, seeing Sam jerk back as he sits up, uncurling and unfolding his arms. He has three elbows now, and he doesn't unfold himself entirely. Otherwise his arms are too long for standing.

Dean says something, and Gabriel touches his head, searching for his ears. Only metal there, but when Sam responds he can hear him. They sound like their voices have been filtered underwater, but clarity is improving.

"- up, Dean. He's awake."

"Yeah, I can see that." Even through his distorted senses Gabriel can tell that Dean's tone is dry, he can tell that Dean is tense. Irritable and possibly scared of him.

The thought causes him to try standing, simply to see how Dean will react. Sam's too calm for this, and he wants to see someone run, wants something to _catch_ -

Gabriel mentally shakes himself. Hell, he's been turned into a predator, he's been twisted into some carnivorous animal. He won't let himself fall into that mindset, not if he can help it.

His legs are worse than his arms: two knee joints, impossibly long limbs, and a new ability to curl his legs as if they had no bones, so he can fold himself from impossibly tall and long to impossibly small and compact. Gabriel doesn't like it, doesn't like being up so high. He chose a shorter vessel for a reason, not just for his good looks and great personality.

The thought of his vessel makes him hope that he's alone in this body, hopes that he isn't sharing this. Because Dean and Sam are looking up at him with fear and worry and uncertainty, and he has to sit on his new urge to rip them apart again.

"Gabriel, can you hear me?" Sam asks, and Gabriel looks at him, angling his entire body to face Sam.

He tries to speak, to make some vocal noise that Sam will understand, and all that he can manage is silence. There are still muscles and ways to move his new body that he hasn't figured out yet, but somehow he knows that human speech is beyond him.

So he raises his hands, and is surprised to see that they are still hands, albeit all-black and his fingers taper into blades and he's missing a finger, but they are manageable and he can give a thumbs up.

"Oh, God." Dean says, and Gabriel realizes how this looks. Realizes that Dean just completely understood that he's standing in front of someone sentient, someone he knew.

He lowers his hands and is already automatically sinking into a crouch, turning away.

He ignores whatever Sam says to Dean and focuses on how soft the floor is. Anything other than the fear that is holding him with chilly hands.

\---

Castiel is pure purpose, clean lines and bright anger when God appears at his shoulder, and the moment he feels his Father beside him the anger is gone, and he stills his motions.

"I have need of you, Castiel," God says, and he does not need to see Castiel's nod to know that he will obey. Castiel is loyal, obedient in all matters these days. Perhaps attempting to atone for his actions during the aborted Apocalypse, and God sees no reason to correct his thinking now.

Castiel has become one of his most powerful creations, powerful enough to severely wound Raphael, the strongest of his angels in terms of sheer power. God altered Castiel so he would be this way, and trusted the rebuilding of Heaven to him.

Castiel touches the forehead of his prisoner and sends the angel away. "Yes, Father?" He asks.

"Gabriel has been badly damaged, and I need you to contain him and if possible find a way to return him to his original state." God does not tell Castiel that he couldn't fix Gabriel immediately. He does not tell Castiel that he's busy working on a way to prevent this from happening to any more of his children. He instead gives Castiel a location, and trusts the care of Gabriel to his hands.

Then God looks up at his sky and leaves to find the intruders in his universe.

\---

Castiel arrives in a hotel room that is in the process of being torn apart. There is blood on the walls, Sam and Dean are holding guns, and two creatures that Castiel immediately recognizes as demons are slamming themselves at the wall next to the salted window, trying to break it down.

There is a misshapen and blood-spattered form on one of the beds, crouched over the remains of one of the demons, and it appears to be eating the dead demon.

Castiel exorcises the two demons with an out-stretched hand and turns to the creature, looking at it. He sees nothing demonic, and after a moment of hard staring he sees traces of Grace. That stops him for a moment, as the creature - Gabriel? - takes another large handful out of the corpse with its hands and puts it its mouth.

"Cas," Dean says, and Castiel looks at him, hearing fear and concern and relief all in Dean's voice. "God sent you?"

He nods, and watches Dean's body relax fractionally. "Then can you...make him stop? Or something?"

Castiel looks back at the creature and considers. "Is that Gabriel?"

"I...yeah, sorry Cas."

Castiel carefully approaches his damaged brother, watching him eat human flesh, and wonders at why God would leave Gabriel like this.

Gabriel jerks his head up, looking at him, and through blood-spattered goggles that are melded to Gabriel's skin Castiel can see his eyes widening.

Barely seconds later Gabriel is throwing himself across the room in fast movements, getting across the second bed and ducking behind it, curling up into a shaking ball.

Castiel realizes that Gabriel must have realized what he was doing and reacted with disgust. He could see something like a lid on a hinge swing shut over Gabriel's open mouth, and he could see the horror in his eyes before he ran.

So he does not wait before following Gabriel, and puts a hand on a shaking shoulder.

"Gabriel," He says, and the trembling under his hand increases. "Gabriel, I forgive you."

If there is anything Castiel understands here and now, he understands this: Gabriel was not sinning on purpose, God has forgiven him, and that is why Castiel is here.

\---

Gabriel does not want Castiel to be here. He does not want Castiel to see what has happened to him, and he does not want the forgiveness he can see in Castiel's eyes. Yet he knows he needs it, and unlike his brother Lucifer he is not too proud to accept it.

He wishes he didn't need it. He wishes that the smell of blood wouldn't make it so difficult for him to stay here, across the room. He wishes that he had been able to hold himself still, but warm moving creatures that he could sense were evil and not meant to be -

Gabriel hadn't been able to help himself. He closes his eyes and with a shaky hand covers Castiel's hand. Help me, he thinks, knowing that Castiel can't help him. If his Father could not help him, then what chance does Castiel have?

Still, it is nice to feel the strength behind Castiel's fingers, and he lets himself fantasize for a moment that Castiel might be able to hold him back if he loses control.

But only for a moment, because Gabriel is realistic, and he knows that he is one of the creatures that hurt him, and he can bat aside Grace like paper.

The demon he killed went down even easier, come to think of it. Gabriel unfolds an arm, looking at his hand and claws, realizing how easy it would be to kill angels, let alone humans.

He could destroy Heaven, unless they found a way to stop him. The thought gives him chills, and soon he is curling back up in fear, knowing that there are more of these creatures like him out there, knowing that they would destroy Heaven if given a chance.

He has no way to speak, to convey his thoughts to Castiel. He can only hope that God knows what he knows, and is working on a solution.

He can only pray, and so he does.

\---

Sam is freaking out. It's the best way to put it. He knows Dean is too, and for good reason.

"You mean you can't turn him _back_?" Dean asks, and Sam knows already that God would have done it if he could, and that means Castiel can't do it either.

"Without some understanding of exactly what did this to him, and how, no, I cannot." Castiel says, and there is a sadness in his voice that they all understand.

Sam looks over at Gabriel, and it's still terrifying to think that it's Gabriel over there, but Gabriel is watching, clearly listening.

If he didn't look so terrifying it would be almost adorable to see how he's following Castiel with his eyes and alert. But Sam saw him tear through those demons like they were nothing, and somehow he thinks that Gabriel could tear through Castiel, too.

"I hate to ask," Sam says, interrupting whatever Dean's saying. "But...is it dangerous to have him here? With us?"

He can see Gabriel flinch, out of the corner of his eye.

"Yes." Castiel says. "If something goes wrong, you two must flee."

Gabriel is shaking his head, hands (claws? Sam doesn't have words for this.) going up.

"What is it?" He asks Gabriel.

Gabriel stares at all of them and Sam realizes he should rephrase.

"Are you dangerous?" He hates to ask. He has to.

Gabriel extends a thumb up, and points at Castiel. Another thumbs up. He looks terrified.

"Can you control yourself enough, Gabriel?" Castiel asks, and Sam hopes for another thumbs up. He gets one, after a moment, and is relieved.

It's twenty questions with Gabriel, and Sam hates himself for thinking that. It's not a game, it's the need for information so they can help him without harming themselves.

"Wait," Sam says, realizing something. "Could you type? Yes/No answers aren't going to help that much, here."

Gabriel looks at his claws and gives a hesitant thumbs up. Sam prepares to sacrifice his laptop for the team, and goes to get it.

He opens up Notepad and sets the laptop on the table by the window, and steps back. "All yours." He says, and gulps.

Dean is blessedly silent about this. Sam will thank him later, when they aren't waiting for Gabriel to unfold enough to approach the table.

Gabriel finally does unfold entirely, and he glances at the ceiling, annoyed for a moment (something strangely normal that makes Sam feel relieved) before refolding enough so he fits in the room.

He stretches his claws out carefully, and with painstaking precision he types.

It's awkward, and nothing's capitalized, but Sam carefully moves close enough to read it outloud.

"'Pretend I'm a shark and don't bleed near me.'" Sam reads, then looks at Gabriel. "Your sense of humor is still there."

"Brother," Cas says. "Can you tell us anything we could use to prevent this from happening again?"

Gabriel is typing already, and Sam's realizing how close he is. He takes a deep breath and reads as Gabriel types. (He's taking one for the team, being up here next to Gabriel like this.)

"'Our swords are useless, and our Grace stops working on them.'" Here Gabriel pauses, shuddering briefly. "...'I was prey. Forced to try hiding, but they got me. If you meet one, fly. They can't follow us like that, but they're damn fast.' Got that, Cas?" Sam looks at Cas, hoping that there's some solution here.

He doesn't want to think of the implications of Gabriel's Grace not working.

"I understand." Castiel says. "I will have more questions later."

Gabriel bends to type again, then takes the hint and hides behind the far bed again, curled up. Sam retrieves his computer, and looks at the keys. There are tiny points where Gabriel typed, but no damage beyond that.

It's the message that Gabriel wrote that scares him most.

"What'd he say?" Dean asks, after a moment of silence. "Sam?"

Sam hands the laptop him, wordlessly, and looks over at Gabriel, who isn't even paying attention now, just curled as tightly as it was possible for him.

 _i want father to destroy me_

He doesn't even know what to tell Gabriel. He doesn't even know what to tell Cas. But he looks at Gabriel and thinks of what Dean would do if it were Sam in Gabriel's place, and he feels a fresh rush of sympathy, because Gabriel won't find death at his family's hands, no matter what he does, no matter what he is.

\--- **epilogue**

No one destroys Gabriel. But God finds a way to bar the creatures from Creation, and no other angels suffer Gabriel's fate.

Gabriel doesn't know whether to be glad at that or not, but when his Father tells him that he will find a way to heal Gabriel, he believes him.

Castiel helps him stay in control of himself, and the Winchesters help him stay at least some small distance from insanity. Even Dean stops flinching when he sees him eventually.

It's not much of an existence, after what he had.

But Sam gets him his own laptop and they chat with each other, and Castiel helps dull some of the physical pains.

But most importantly, Gabriel knows that someday Father will come down and make him whole again. And with that, he can go on.

 **end.**


End file.
